


Teeth at my throat, blood in my mouth

by kameo_chan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vikings, Ancient Werewolves Kicking Ass, F/M, I'm Starting Another Chaptered Fic Again..., M/M, Norse Myths & Legends, Oh god, Other, Possibly Convoluted Plot and References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 17:17:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kameo_chan/pseuds/kameo_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one had ever told Stiles being the Chieftain’s son would be this difficult and humiliating. And then those thrice-damned <i>vargulfr</i> just had to go and mark his village as part of their territory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The legends never said anything about this

**Author's Note:**

> I - I have no excuses to offer. Or apologies. Maybe. Viking AU - because after all, what's a series about a bunch of hormonal teenage werewolves without a good old Norse mythology AU? I guess the only other thing I have to offer is how strange I find it that Vikings gave their kids names like Scott. Or Jackson. Those crazy pillaging, plundering pillocks!

There aren’t really all that many good things to say about being the only son of a strict Viking father. Stiles knows this because he is that son, and because his father is _that_ kind of father, and also perhaps because he is the clan’s Chieftain, but that is completely beside the point and wholly irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. The point being, that there is absolutely no way Stiles can ever hope to hide anything from his father. 

A case in point would be his best friend bleeding out all over the fur-covered flagstones of his father’s great longhouse. Not that Scott dying is something he’d wish to hide from anyone, much less his father, but explaining to Scott’s mother as to exactly why _her_ only son is currently rattling out breath like a wounded deer and leaking blood like a punctured mead skin isn't something Stiles is particularly looking forward to. 

“We have to stop the bleeding!” he wails, hardly recognizing his own voice. He’s scrabbling for something, anything that might help. 

“I told you we shouldn’t wander around the woods at night!” Scott bites out, hands fumbling uselessly at the gaping wound in his side. “You said it would be safe!” 

“The hunters said it would be! How was I supposed to know that Jackson would lie?!” 

“Because he’s a lying liar!” Scott hisses through clenched teeth. “He always has been!” 

“Well,” Stiles huffs indignantly, finally locating one of his old tunics and frantically tearing off strip after strip of cloth to use as binding. “You could have said no.”

“You said I would be chosen as a hunter if I did and that I would be stuck apprenticing the fish monger if I didn’t!” 

“It’s not my fault you obviously have standards far too high for your means!” Stiles shoots back, hands busying themselves with compressing Scott’s side and then binding it as firmly as he dares. “Fish-mongering is a perfectly acceptable profession in this village and Master Finstock would have been _happy_ to teach you the trade!” 

“But I don’t _want_ to be a fish monger!” Scott whines, wincing when Stiles draws the binding a bit too tight. “I’ll never be able to prove myself! How will Allison even spare me a glance if I reek of fish guts and brine for the rest of my life?”

“You see,” Stiles admonishes, ignoring the queasy lilt of his stomach at the way the blood still oozes through the cloth, like tar boiling up from a pit. “That is your problem. You aren’t meant to be a hunter, Scott. But you keep trying to be one anyway, because you aim too high!” 

“Oh, yes, and you have never in your life begged your father to let you along on a raid because you wish to win Lydia’s hand?” Scott rolls his eyes, but the gesture looks awkward and wrong given how much blood he’s lost, as though his eyes are about to fall from their sockets. Stiles uses what’s left of the tunic to try and mop up the hideous mess, studiously ignoring the vivid images his mind supplies. “ _You_ aren’t meant to be a _berserker_!” 

“That’s completely different,” he argues back, and it is too, see if it isn’t. Being a berserker is far better than being a hunter, because berserkers have _scars_. More than hunters have, at any rate. “I’m the Chieftain’s son; I’m supposed to be a warrior.” 

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Scott supplies weakly before his head drops to Stiles’ father’s most prized stag pelt with a sonorous thud. 

“Scott?” Stiles ventures; prodding hesitantly at the prone figure. “Scott?” A little louder this time, and perhaps with a knife edge of worry just for good measure. Scott still doesn’t answer him, and suddenly the worry in Stiles’ throat blooms to full-blown panic in his heart when he notices that Scott’s chest is lacking the tell-tale heave of a person alive and breathing. “Scott! Wake up!” 

For one horrifying eternity all Stiles can think of is that he has killed his best friend with his incessant curiosity, that his father will kill him; no, that Scott’s mother will kill him first and that his father will ask one of the _völur_ to come to the village and resurrect him only to kill him _again_ as punishment, as if he were Hodur himself. But then Scott draws a breath so deep Stiles is sure it will rip him limb from limb and he bolts upright as though he has been burnt. 

“Oh, thank the Gods!” Stiles breathes; throwing a careless arm about Scott’s neck and clinging to him like a limpet. “I thought you’d died and left me with all the explaining to do!” 

“It would serve you right,” Scott mutters, disentangling himself from the embrace. He looks around wonderingly, as though he has never seen the inside of a longhouse before and then reaches to his side. 

“Don’t!” Stiles scolds, but Scott’s ears have never been the most useful part of his person, and he undoes the binding before Stiles has time enough to swat his hands away. Stiles is already anticipating another fresh well of blood to come pouring from the wound, but when he peeks through his fingers – his honour will never have him admit it, but he loathes the sight of injury of any kind – there is nothing, other than a few smears of drying blood, where the wound had been not a few moments earlier. 

The first thing to come out of Stiles’ mouth, unsurprisingly, is: “Are you a _seidmannr_?” And the question is completely worth it too, for the fleeting look of sheer horror that suddenly fills Scott’s face, even if his fist connects squarely with Stiles’ jaw right after. 

“Don’t even think about jesting about something like that!” Scott hisses and his voice is high and reedy. “Everyone knows that they’ll hear and carry away whoever they think has been practising _ergi_! They’ll take me away and my poor mother will be left alone and defenceless at the hands of barbarians!” 

Stiles thinks about pointing out the fact that Scott’s mother is perhaps the most terrifying woman he’s ever met and that she’s about as far from defenceless as humanly possible what with wielding that great big ladle of hers like a whip, but he keeps his mouth shut. “Sorry,” he mutters. 

Scott gives him a beady stare, as though he means to ascertain whether Stiles is sincere or not simply by utilizing the power of his mind. Which, really, Stiles thinks, does nothing to dissuade him from thinking that his best friend is a _seidmannr_. At all. 

Stiles clears his throat and tries to rid his mind of images of Scott dancing naked under the moonlight, offering prayers to Freyr and Odin. “Well then, how do you explain that?” he asks, reaching out to gingerly press a finger to the unbroken, unmarred skin of Scott’s side. 

“How should I know?” Scott answers petulantly. “Perhaps you should ask the wolf who bit me. Seeing as it’s your fault I was bitten in the first place.”

“That’s it,” Stiles declares; shoving Scott’s head down with a quick and brutal jerk. “If you are well enough to sulk, then you are well enough to train. Which is what we are going to do now, seeing as you’ve offended your only friend and ally in the entire village and the only way in which you can regain your honour is by becoming a hunter worthy of such a dauntless future Chieftain as I.” 

“You mean we are going to spar because you feel guilty that I almost _died_ from a wolf-bite,” Scott says slyly, reaching out a hand for Stiles to help him up. "Fortunately, I have been blessed by Thor himself, which is why I am as hale as ever!" 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Stiles sniffs; but he drags Scott up anyway. “I want to test my theory that you were dropped on your head when you were a babe and that the Gods felt sorry for you and decided to bless you with an outstanding talent for fish-mongering and little else.”

Perhaps he deserves the punch he gets for the snip, and perhaps Scott’s fist seems somehow more solid than usual, but right then, Stiles couldn’t dredge up a care even if he used all of Master Finstock’s well-woven nets to do so. 

\---- 

It isn’t until the moon swells to his full glory two days later that Stiles gives his and Scott’s misadventure in the woods another thought. Mostly because being youths meant that they were entitled to act foolishly every now and then (more _then_ than _now_ , if Stiles’ father had anything to say in the matter) and forget about the cares of the world, but also because it had never occurred to him that his best friend might try to eat him. 

“Scott!” Stiles yells in alarm, retreating further and further into the confines of the boathouse and trapping himself ever more surely with each step. “Scott, stop! It’s me, Stiles! Scott!” 

But the creature in front of him is not Scott, save perhaps for the vaguely human eyes that peer at him with hungry malice. Scott is _gone_ , and in his place there is this abominable thing that looks half wolf and half boy and is dangerously feral and drunk on the moon’s might. 

“Please,” Stiles begs, driven into the farthest corner of the boathouse, far enough back that his head brushes against the low eaves of the south wall. “Scott, remember! I’m your friend! I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you make me.” Which is a lie if Stiles has ever told one, because the only things to hand are a few scattered rags and old whetstones. There isn’t even flaying knife to hand, and Stiles had left his at his father’s house, along with his buckler and sword and sense of self-preservation. 

Scott lunges at him and Stiles closes his eyes, offers up his silent prayers to Hela so that he may find peace in the afterlife in her embrace, but then there is a clamour and an ear-splitting howl and when he opens his eyes again, Scott is nowhere to be seen. The moon shines brightly through the open shutters, and on the path leading to the docks and the pier, Stiles can just make out a shape that sends a familiar chill running down his back. 

It is the wolf that had bitten Scott. He is sure of it. 

The wolf regards him with a cold intelligence, its blue eyes and sharp fangs glittering faintly in the pale glow as it approaches him with wary disdain. 

“You,” Stiles breathes. And suddenly, his fear is overcome by anger so great and terrible it shakes his whole frame. “What have you done to him? What did you do to my friend?!” he screams at it, before bending down to pick up one of the whetting stones and hurling it at the wolf. 

The wolf does not even flinch away from the blow, even when Stiles clearly hears the dull thud of it impacting against its furry side. Instead, its maw curls into a snarl and it growls at Stiles; a low, warning rumble that seems to travel through the earth and up Stiles’ legs. 

_Don’t ever do that again, little boy_ , it seems say. It pads forward a few more steps until it is right at the entrance to the boathouse, hovering in the open arch like a deadly shadow. 

And then it turns, utters a lone howl and speeds off into the night. 

Stiles slumps back against the south wall, all the feeling suddenly gone from his legs and hangs his head between his useless arms, waiting for the dark wave of dizziness to pass so that his head can clear. When he is sure enough of himself to stand again, Stiles peers up at the moon who still riding his chariot aimlessly high along the trails of the night sky. 

“I’m going to bring him back,” he tells him. And then he walks over to the dry docks and picks up the nearest hammer his arms are able to heft comfortably before setting off after Scott and the wolf.


	2. What do you mean, he's not as bad as he looks?

Stiles doesn’t find Scott that night, nor the following morning. He purposefully seeks out all their favourite haunts, after having made off with one of the mead’s hall torches – he is reckless, not foolhardy – but to no avail. Scott is nowhere to be found, and so he leaves behind both his torch and his hammer at the edge of the woods and makes his way home. 

The unfortunate thing about the whole mess is that Scott’s hapless victims can be found practically _everywhere_ when Stiles returns to the village by mid-morning. He is greeted by a chorus of anguished sobs and the sight of bits of people scatted hither and yon like the alder ash the _völur_ scatter around the village boundaries each spring to keep the trolls away. 

“It was a _vargulf_! I swear!” someone shouts from amidst the gathered crowd, while someone else immediately lobbies back with a hoarse cry of, “Shut up, you fool! It was a wolf, as any man with good eyes in his head can see!” Stiles ignores everything in favour of trying to sneak into his father’s house, but as usual, the Gods show him no favour and the one person he runs into is the one he had been hoping to avoid.

“Stiles!” his father barks, spotting him from where he is conversing with a few of the village elders; doubtlessly about the goings on of the previous night. But before Stiles can even offer an explanation (or an excuse), his father rushes forward and crushes him to his chest. “Thank Odin you’re safe! I was worried that you’d run off in the night!” At his father’s words, guilt starts to gnaw away at his insides like a dormouse nibbling away at a wheat sheaf, and Stiles tries his utmost best to make the reassuring smile he gives his father look natural. 

“Me, father? Why would I have run off? In the middle of the night? To the boathouse? Alone? Possibly.” 

It is as if Stiles is never merely satisfied with getting himself into trouble; no, he has to at least double whatever punishment he is bound to receive by opening his mouth. Once again, he curses his fate for having been born the son of a Chieftain. His father merely releases him to give him a flat, expressionless look and then cuff him behind the ear. 

“Ow! What was that for?” 

“You know well enough what it was for, Stiles.” His father’s reprimands have grown harsher and more pronounced with the years even as his tolerance for Stiles’ antics has decreased, not that Stiles can blame him for it much. He knows what kind of child he is, restless and always under everyone’s feet. It isn’t his fault either. His mother had always said that he’d been born with a busy mind and not nearly enough hands to fill his days with work.

“What were you doing at the boathouse alone in the middle of the night?” The question is weary and somewhat disheartened, as though his father doesn’t really expect him to be honest about it. For some reason, his father’s disappointment sets him ill at ease. 

“I was looking for Scott.” It is not _exactly_ untrue, he reminds himself. Scott’s mother had found him busying himself at the scrivener’s the day before and had asked him whether or not he had seen Scott since the morning. He hadn’t and he’d told her so and she had asked him to look. And being the magnanimous spirit he was, Stiles had. 

“You still haven’t found him?” his father asks; brow furrowed and eyes pinched in concern. 

“No. Why, do you think that… that whatever did this might have gotten Scott too?” Of course, Stiles refrains from telling his father that it is quite likely that Scott is the one responsible for all the carnage in the first place. It wouldn’t do to just announce something like, _Oh and by the by, father, my best friend suddenly turned into a vicious man-eating monster and was spirited away by a stray wolf before trying to kill me_.

“I don’t know,” his father mutters. “It looks to me like wolf work. A few of the sheep are missing as well. Perhaps it was a small pack. But still, to leave the dead like this…” The set of his father’s jaw is grim and anxious, and Stiles feels another tug of guilt. 

“I’m sorry for worrying you,” he offers, laying a hand on his father’s forearm. “I did not know about this until I returned this morning.” 

His father gives him a small, tired smile and covers Stiles’ hand with his own. “It’s fine, as long as you don’t go haring off like that again. I will have some of the hunters search for Scott. I can make no promises, but…” 

“Thank you,” Stiles mutters and ducks his head. He’s not sure he trusts himself not to saying anything about how Scott had changed right in front of him, and so he settles instead for not saying much else at all. His father claps him on the back, and Stiles feels even guiltier for having his father think that he is _afraid_ for Scott when in reality, he is much more afraid _of_ Scott. 

“Go home, son. You’ve had a long night and will have a longer day ahead of you. If we find anything, I will send word with Chris.” Stiles secretly hopes that they will not find anything at all, because Chris is the village’s best hunter and Allison’s father besides, and if ever Scott wishes to pledge his troth to her, he had best not be anywhere near the hunters, half-wolf or no. 

“Good luck and may Freyja protect you!” Stiles calls after his father’s retreating back, before hurrying to the longhouse and latching the door firmly shut behind him. “May she protect you, father,” he whispers, before trudging to the sleeping nook and flopping onto his pallet. 

Sleep comes much easier than he would have thought it to.

\----

Someone is tugging at his sleeve and muttering: “Stiles! Stiles, wake up!” Stiles does not want to, though, and so he just rolls over until he can drag a pelt over his head to muffle the noise.

“Stiles!” the voice calls again, more urgently than before. But Stiles still doesn’t wake. He’s in the middle of a wonderful dream where is hand-picked as _Vidarr’s_ champion in Midgard and he’s about to slay _Fenrisulfr_ as his beloved Lydia watches, the tears standing in her eyes a testament to the valour of his deeds. 

“You leave me not choice, Stiles,” the voice warns and then _wet wet wet cold cold COLD_. Stiles leaps from his pallet like a man caught up in a bloodrage, limbs flailing every which way as he sputters and gasps. When the world comes back in focus, it is to Scott standing with an empty water ewer in one hand and a look of nervous annoyance on his face. 

“If you ever do that again, I will make sure no one ever finds your corpse,” Stiles threatens; wiping futilely at his sopping face. 

Scott scoffs, setting down the ewer. “You’d confess your crime before the sun rode to the West.” 

“True,” Stiles offers, taking Scott in. “But at least I wouldn’t actually _try_ to kill my best friend.” The words are cruel, he knows, but necessary. Scott shoots him a pained look.

“I was overcome, Stiles. It was as if I was a prisoner in my own mind, looking out and seeing only a red haze over everything. You know I would never have done something like that if I had been myself. Don’t you?” 

Stiles considers him for a moment, and Scott ducks his gaze and shuffles his feet, scuffing the toes of his sheepskin boots. 

“I know.” Scott’s head jerks up and Stiles almost wants to smile at the naked relief he can see in Scott’s face. “But what I don’t know is what happened. And you are going to tell me everything, starting with how you came by clothes and why I couldn’t find you even after wasting the entire night and possibly endangering myself trying to look for you.” 

Scott gives him a tentative, hopeful smile then and Stiles _knows_ that he has already forgiven him. Because he is a fool, likely. But also because he and Scott have been the best of friends since they were babes latched onto their mothers’ hips. 

“As for the clothes, well… They are yours, actually.” Stiles should have known, but he rolls his eyes dramatically anyway just to make sure that Scott is aware of how unsurprised he is by the admission. “I snuck in right after you went to sleep.” 

“Which isn’t terrifying or mildly disturbing at all,” Stiles blurts out, but he motions Scott to continue after the former gives him a look of such intense hurt and betrayal that not even the most doe-eyed of fawns could hope to compare. 

“Do you want to hear the story or not?” Scott snaps; eyes yellowing for the briefest of moments, and if Stiles were a worse sort of friend, he might have told Scott to remain calm, because he is fairly certain that he has used up his daily quota for not being torn limb from limb. But he is not and he does not and so he merely cocks his head to one side and pretends not to notice that there are fangs lining the inside of Scott’s mouth. 

“You were saying?” 

“I was saying that I waited until I knew your father had gone and you were asleep. I was naked and cold and hungry – I ate some of the left-over gruel your father made – but most of all, I felt ill. I’d felt even worse when I came to my senses, as though I was going die, Stiles. It was terrible!” 

“Where did you come to?” 

For the briefest of moments, some unnameable emotion flashes across Scott’s face, there and gone before Stiles can decipher it. “I’m not supposed to tell you,” Scott mutters, worrying at his bottom lip. “He said I wasn’t to tell anyone.” 

“He? Who is _he_ , Scott?” But Stiles already has a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he knows of whom Scott is speaking. 

“The wolf that saved you last night. His name is Atall.” There is another flash of emotion across Scott’s face, but this time Stiles can read it as clearly as he can the runes engraved on his father’s greatsword. Scott is awe-struck. 

“He did not save me,” Stiles mutters. “I saved myself.” 

“No, you didn’t.” Scott’s tone is as flat as it is incredulous and Stiles gives him a good, hard stare for it. Perhaps it will burn through that auroch-thick skull of his and make him see sense, but no, Scott simply shakes his head for all Stiles’ effort. “You didn’t,” he repeats. “Because I almost killed you Stiles, and if Atall had not intervened, you would be dead right now.” 

There really isn’t very much Stiles can say to that. But his mouth, as always, is bent on rectifying – or, ruining, to be precise – the situation. 

“He tried to attack me! I had to throw a whetstone at him to keep him at bay!” 

Scott gives another shake of his head, and adds insult to injury by casting Stiles a longsuffering look. “He was trying to _protect_ you, Stiles. He knew that I would maul you if you followed me.” 

“Well he growled at me,” Stiles throws in petulantly, determined to have the last say in a conversation that was rapidly going downhill in a manner he definitely had not anticipated. 

“Can you blame him? You threw him with a whetstone! A whetstone, for the love of Frigg! Stiles, Atall would never harm a human. He told me so himself!” 

“Oh, so now you speak with wolves. Wonderful, my friend the _vargulf_. Odin help me,” Stiles mutters darkly. “And so you know, he’s a wolf, Scott! Since when have wolves told the truth? Since never, that’s when. Don’t you remember _anything_ about my father’s tales of _Fenrisulfr_?” 

“This is different,” Scott continues stubbornly, and Stiles wants to punch him for his bullheadedness. “I… I don’t know how, but Stiles, Atall helped me throw off my madness. He helped me become human again.” 

A long, somewhat uncomfortable silence follows Scott’s words, during which Stiles tries to piece things together and fails miserably and Scott just stands there, looking at him with innocent eyes. 

“Fine! Fine,” Stiles concedes when finally he cannot stands Scott’s pleading looks any longer. “I believe you. I still don’t trust this Atall, but I believe you. Now, when you said he told you not to tell anyone…” 

“He was very emphatic about it.” 

“But… Wouldn’t you still be keeping your word if instead of telling me, you _showed_ me where he took you?” Someday, Stiles knows, he will feel bad for leading Scott on like a ram by the horns. But today is not that day, and he takes a secret pride in the way he can almost hear Scott mull his words over in his mind. 

“I guess so,” Scott says after a while, offering a hapless little shrug. 

“Good,” Stiles says, casting about glances for his buckler and sword. “Because you are going to take me there, right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another glossary for this chapter. I hope you enjoyed reading it! 
> 
> _vargulf_ \- werewolf; more specifically and in a historical context, a _vargulf_ is a stray wolf intent on killing livestock, but not eating its kill  
>  _Freyja_ \- a goddess of protection, healing, war, fertility and magic; Freyja's name (along with that of her brother, Freyr and her fellow god Thor) was often invoked before battle to call upon her strength  
>  _Vidarr_ \- A son of Odin, prophesied to slay Fenrir during Ragnarok  
>  _Fenrisulfr_ \- One of the spawn of Loki, the Great Wolf (a.k.a Fenrir) is destined to kill Odin during Ragnarok after his sons have eaten the sun and the moon  
>  _aurochs_ \- an extinct breed of cattle known for their long horns and furry hides  
>  _Atall_ \- meaning fierce, or terrible

**Author's Note:**

> I might incorporate a few things from some other fandoms of mine later on, in which case I'll edit the tags appropriately. For now though, this shindig is all Teen Wolf, all the time. And just to help out a bit, here's a glossary of the terms used in this chapter:
> 
>  _völur_ \- Nordic shamans or prophetesses. Women who practised _seidr_  
>  _seidr_ \- elemental/spiritual magic used to divine the future  
>  _seidmannr_ \- a male practitioner of _seidr_ ; uniformly considered to be... effeminate and emasculated. Ha! Silly old Vikings!  
>  _ergi_ \- the type of _seidr_ employed by a _seidmannr_  
>  _Hodur_ \- the blind son of Odin who slew his own brother, Baldr, due to Loki's trickery  
>  _Hela_ \- Goddess of Hel, where all the souls who succumbed to age, illness, accident or anything not battle-related went to rest after death
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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